Malazan Book Of The Fallen
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Anomander Rake
Golden Knight of the Realm
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Shiiit - was just about to start a thread on this. This is by far my favorite fantasy series of all time. Can anyone recommend any novels that are equally as good?
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Same here. You'd probably likethis. It's the same type of gritty fantasy, where mages are just schmucks with magic instead of being all-powerful, or over-the-top.
On topic, the new ICE novel is out (Blood and Bone) and it's the K'azz/Skinner/TCG story ark. About halfway through it now and it's pretty solid.
Anomander Rake
Golden Knight of the Realm
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Nebuchadnezzar
Golden Squire
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GRRM...obviously, Joe Abercrombie, and Matthew Stover are all on my GOD TIER with Erikson.
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I felt pretty hollow after finishing the 10 Erikson books in the main series after spending like a year and 1/2 reading at least a portion of them every day. Hoping the Esslemont ones can fill some of the void and then a reread at some point. I bet the series is great the second time through.
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Kalaar kururuc
Grumpy old man
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A full series re-read is very helpful, especially now all of the series is available so no need for enforced breaks while waiting for a book to be published, really helps place all the characters better. Can't wait for the other 2 forge series to be released as the first gives some great background to some of the familiar faces and I'm hoping the series continues with this.
Decado
Golden Knight of the Realm
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I ended up quite disappointed with these with the exception of books 1-4 which i would put at the top of any list I ever make for sheer brilliance. After that I felt they just kind of meandered on for the sake of it for far too long, plot lines were introduced that added little to me and the ending was just bleh. Not even gonna mention the whole lets not resolve a thousand and 1 story arcs......
Intrinsic
Person of Whiteness
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There's probably, like Decado said, a thousand you can point to. Erikson's view on a lot of them seems to be that "life goes on..." People's arc come to a close, satisfactorily or not, and they fade away. The other unresolved plots can be tackled in upcoming trilogies or in Esslemont's books. Which have already happened or we know are planned to. Here is one of the many threads onMalazanEmpire.com. Guess I loved it for how open and not tied up everything was, and knowing that the world continues in future books. But it does make sense how frustrating it can be to not know. Also, the snake was the worst part of any book I've ever read.
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Many of those were answered in Esslemont's books or Forge of Darkness. Many of them I just don't care. And many of them don't count. Like Dassem Ultor and Hood. That's a side story at best, but it's relevance to the Chained God is very little, so I don't think story arc that requires resolving.
I'd much rather it was explained what the Shake had anything to do with the Chained God story. Or that stupid fucking Snake. Or how did Tavore know she had to do what she did? Or did anyone else notice that Ascendant's plan to deal with the Chained God required Kerafyrm(sorry, I can't remember the dragon's real name)? Yet, we're to believe they depended on Errastas acting like a petulant little child to release it?
Dust of Dreams and The Crippled God, while good and awesome(battle) books, was chock full of meaningless coincidence. The short tails pick NOW to come back and oops, there's a Malazan army in the way. Big battle awesomeness! Influence on the main plot: zero.
I'd much rather it was explained what the Shake had anything to do with the Chained God story. Or that stupid fucking Snake. Or how did Tavore know she had to do what she did? Or did anyone else notice that Ascendant's plan to deal with the Chained God required Kerafyrm(sorry, I can't remember the dragon's real name)? Yet, we're to believe they depended on Errastas acting like a petulant little child to release it?
Dust of Dreams and The Crippled God, while good and awesome(battle) books, was chock full of meaningless coincidence. The short tails pick NOW to come back and oops, there's a Malazan army in the way. Big battle awesomeness! Influence on the main plot: zero.
So I'm about halfway through Blood & Bone. I never had much of an problem with ICEs writing - or at least, I didn't dislike it as much as a lot of people in the old thread, but this book is getting a bit ridiculous with the foreshadowing and the saying_shit_but_not_saying_anything. It's a cool story and I like any of the stuff involving the Avowed, but half the time I have no idea who the fuck these people are, and there is a LOT of stuff like this:
"He looked at the thing. The thing You, Reader have been reading about for 5 chapters. And then he realized...what it was..." (end of chapter)
"He talked to some_character. The character that You, Reader have been reading about for 10 chapters. And then he realized...who he was...." (end of chapter)
"Again he was reminded of the deed. The deed that you, Reader have been reading about for 10 chapters. And then, he realized..what the deed was....." (end of chapter)
My Malazan history is as good as the next guy, but for once I'd like him to just come out and fucking say who or what the hell he's actually talking about instead of assuming that the reader has all ~15 or so books in this series committed to memory.
"He looked at the thing. The thing You, Reader have been reading about for 5 chapters. And then he realized...what it was..." (end of chapter)
"He talked to some_character. The character that You, Reader have been reading about for 10 chapters. And then he realized...who he was...." (end of chapter)
"Again he was reminded of the deed. The deed that you, Reader have been reading about for 10 chapters. And then, he realized..what the deed was....." (end of chapter)
My Malazan history is as good as the next guy, but for once I'd like him to just come out and fucking say who or what the hell he's actually talking about instead of assuming that the reader has all ~15 or so books in this series committed to memory.
Has to be my favorite series as can be evidenced by my user name! Has anyone read the new ICE book? I know it's out in the UK but has anyone imported it to the US yet?
Nemesis
Bridgeburner
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This series seems to have just made its way to Audible, released in October of this year. So far, only book 1 is available via Audible.
Has anyone listened to the audiobook that would recommend it? The sample doesn't sound great, but I've grown to like other narrators that I wasn't a fan of out the gate.
Baghwan
Lord Nagafen Raider
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It's taken me ages to get though Toll the Hounds, after plowing though the series so far and loving it, don't know, its definitely my least favorite so far. I'm moving on to Return of the Crimson Guard, which I understand now was a mistake and you should read it before ToH, do things improve with Dust of Dreams as well?
Nebuchadnezzar
Golden Squire
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